Oregon Historical Quarterly Fall 2002

Protesting Monuments to Progress: A Comparative Study of Protests against Four Dams, 1838–1955, by Jeff Crane

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many of America’s rivers were dammed and used for diverse purposes such as irrigation, power generation, and fishing, much as they are today. Even in this earlier period, many people understood that the dams would have negative effects. Looking at protests against four separate dam projects from the early nineteenth to the mid–twentieth century, historian Jeff Crane explores different ways that opposition to dams has been framed.

Early protestors against dams in New England fought to preserve access to resources for subsistence and economic activities and also sought to preserve a lifestyle threatened by the spread of marked capitalism. Later efforts focused on the responsibility of state and federal governments to preserve natural resources such as fisheries and included conservationist arguments from groups including sports and commercial fishers. It was not until the mid–twentieth century that the now-familiar, preservation-oriented efforts of environmental groups in opposition to dams emerged.

Pioneering Free Library Service for the City, 1864–1902: The Library Association of Portland and the Portland Public Library, by Cheryl Gunselman

Many Progressive Era reforms considered education the key to bringing about positive social change, and public libraries were intimately connected with those goals. By the late nineteenth century, Portland boasted two public libraries. The Portland Public Library was a small institution that patrons used free of charge. The Library Association of Portland was one of the city’s oldest and most distinguished cultural institutions, and it charged an annual subscription fee. Using archival records from both institutions, Cheryl Gunselman examines the history of the two organizations, their benefactors, and the role each played in garnering legislative and public approval of a tax-supported library system that merged the two institutions in 1902.

Picking up the Drum: An Oral History from the Columbia Plateau, by Fermore Craig, interviewed and edited by Robin Richards

The topography of the Wallowa Mountains and the Columbia Plateau has sustained the Nez Perce people and shaped their cultural practices from their origin to the present day. A descendant of the survivors of the Nez Perce War of 1877, Fermore Craig speaks about growing up in the region, his family, and their experiences in the place where they have lived for generations.

Lady Loggers and Gyppo Wives: Women and Northwest Logging, by Robert E. Walls

For the first eighty years of the twentieth century, the timber industry fueled the economy of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. The historical record from that period of lumbering and manufacturing, both written and visual, generally portrays a world of men boldly “taming the timberbeast.” Recently, historians have begun to draw attention to the presence of women in timber communities and the significance of their work. In this photo essay, Robert Walls focuses on women’s roles in smaller, independent gyppo logging operations from the 1940s through today. Through period photographs, oral history, and written records, Walls uncovers the history of women who worked alongside the men at a variety of jobs in the woods, the lumber camps, and the mills.

Affiliate Spotlight, edited by Richard H. Engeman Bandon Historical Society / Coquille River Museum Bandon, Oregon

Char Miller, Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism, reviewed by James A. Pritchard

Daniel W. Clayton, Islands of Truth: The Imperial Fashioning of Vancouver Island, reviewed by William G. Robbins

Dan Flores, The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, reviewed by Derek R. Larson

Kathleen Lopp Smith and Verbeck Smith, editors, Ice Window: Letters from a Bering Strait Village, 1892–1902, reviewed by Sherry L. Smith

Alexandra Villard de Borchgrave and John Cullen, Villard: The Life and Times of an American Titan, reviewed by W. Thomas White

Laurie Mercier, Anaconda: Labor, Community, and Culture in Montana’s Smelter City, reviewed by Janet L. Finn

Robin K. Wright, Northern Haida Master Carvers, reviewed by Robert Bringhurst

Lawney L. Reyes, White Grizzly Bear’s Legacy: Learning to Be Indian, reviewed by Cary C. Collins

Daniel Justin Herman, Hunting and the American Imagination, reviewed by Michael Allen

Lawrence B. DeGraaf, Kevin Mulroy, and Quintard Taylor, editors, Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California, reviewed by Jeff Crane